You know he is like the schoolmaster in Goldsmith's
"Deserted Village"--"e'en though vanquished, he would argue still." He
and mother went to look at some seventeen families (they had got the
addresses somewhere), while I retired to my sofa, and would have nothing
to do with it. At last they made arrangements, and I was transported to
the establishment from which I now write you. I write you from the bosom
of a Parisian menage--from the depths of a second-rate boarding-house.
Father only left Paris after he had seen us what he calls comfortably
settled here, and had informed Madame de Maisonrouge (the mistress of the
establishment--the head of the "family") that he wished my French
pronunciation especially attended to. The pronunciation, as it happens,
is just what I am most at home in; if he had said my genders or my idioms
there would have been some sense. But poor father has no tact, and this
defect is especially marked since he has been in Europe. He will be
absent, however, for three months, and mother and I shall breathe more
freely; the situation will be less intense. I must confess that we
breathe more freely than I expected, in this place, where we have been
for about a week.
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